Neural substrate of language and social cognition: Autism and typical development

This is an individual National Research Service Award for post-doctoral research training, which provides support for promising Fellowship Applicants with the potential to become productive, independent investigators in scientific health-related research fields. The goal of this proposal is to identify the shared and distinct neural substrates for social and language processing in typical development and in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Functional magnetic resonance imaging(fMRI) data will be acquired from typical adults, typical children, and children with autism spectrum disorder during responding to joint attention bids and narrative comprehension so greater insights can be gained into the aberrant developmental trajectory underlying both social and linguistic development in ASD. Pinpointing the common neural bases of these primary deficits in ASD may help to guide early intervention and provide neural regions of focus to aid in the search for shared microstructural and genetic bases of these deficits.